Extended file management in Media Library

[mimoho]

Following enhancements should be made to the Media Library:
1) Option to organize media in custom folders, not only by month and year, but let the user choose a folder or create a new one in "wp-content/uploads" to save the item.
2) Ability to move files is essential for keeping them organized. This should be possible with an inbuilt file manager like ​https://tempspace.net/plugins/?page_id=111 while updating all posts and pages the item is associated with.
3) I prefer to keep all my images in its original quality. I've set the image sizes to 0 in the Media settings, but WordPress still produces reduced image files. For thumbnails in the gallery, I'd prefer to view my untouched files as thumbnails in its original size without getting cropped in. Thus, the media gallery could arrange all items in a way that the height stays the same while the width is displayed in full.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Related: #23594, #39644.

[ricjcs]

The current media library is very limited. Like other users, I beg for a feature to better organize the library.

Organization by folders (or categories) would be much better.

I know that plugins can do this, but that way we are dependent on the future of the plugin, which can be discontinued and incompatible with other plugins of this type, there is always the risk of losing the work of having organized thousands of images. The best plugins of this type are also paid for the full version, with the free version being very limited.

I like to depend on plugins as little as possible. In my opinion this is a feature that should come by default, in the same way that the operating system comes with a file manager. It wouldn't make sense for an operating system with just one folder to organize thousands of files, and you need to pay for a plugin to organize them. Basically what happens with WordPress is this.

In addition, I am also a wordpress.com customer without access to plugins. It is desperate to organize thousands of images with the current library. But unfortunately the implementation of this feature has been a utopia for many years...

A note regarding exporting the site via XML: If or when this folder feature is implemented, when generating the XML file for export (WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR), the information of the categories or folders of the images must come with that file, it seems that this does not happen with all plugins.

In the hope of one day having this feature, I made 3 mockups of a possible idea to implement this feature.

[ricjcs]

Design proposal 1

[ricjcs]

Design proposal 2

[ricjcs]

Design proposal 3: After moving the images to a folder, a message appears that allows you to undo, useful if we make mistakes. Sometimes in the tree view we can make mistakes and put it in a folder above or below.

[joedolson]

Better organization of the media library is fairly crucial, however, the backwards compatibility issues around changing existing file structures are pretty significant.

I think something that would be better, overall, would be adding a taxonomy to attachments, and providing a virtual folder structure using hierarchical taxonomies rather than actually moving files.

[ricjcs]

Replying to joedolson:

Better organization of the media library is fairly crucial, however, the backwards compatibility issues around changing existing file structures are pretty significant.

I think something that would be better, overall, would be adding a taxonomy to attachments, and providing a virtual folder structure using hierarchical taxonomies rather than actually moving files.

Yes, I think this is how some plugins work.

[antpb]

#39644 was marked as a duplicate.

[patrick_here]

Replying to ricjcs:

...Organization by folders (or categories) would be much better.
...risk of losing the work of having organized thousands of images. The best plugins of this type are also paid for the full version, with the free version being very limited.

...It wouldn't make sense for an operating system with just one folder to organize thousands of files, and you need to pay for a plugin to organize them. Basically what happens with WordPress is this.
...the implementation of this feature has been a utopia for many years...

Well said; I agree 100%. The typical WordPress site today has far more images or photos in its Media Library, possibly hundreds of them, than it would have had back in 2012. Some considerations:

The Folders-vs-Categories Design Decision:
My preference would be for (virtual) Folders. This means that one image can be dragged-and-dropped to one folder only which is desirable in most cases. The Categories approach allows the user to assign more than one category to a single image - an advantage for some but for most users this would only add confusion.

The Virtual-vs-OnDisk Design Decision
And yes, it's true that most of the existing "folder" plugins really implement the feature by providing a "virtual folder structure using hierarchical taxonomies" rather than tampering with the location of files on hard drive. I think that paradigm should be maintained. The whole question of where the image files live on hard drive (ie: a single custom-named folder or year/date folders) currently is complex enough as-is and could be treated as a separate enhancement if there is a desire to support multiple user-named folders on disk.

Adding images elsewhere
All of this implies that when the user goes to add an image to a post, the folder hierarchy that has been created should be visible and accessible somehow in the "Add Image" interface so that finding the image is not a needle-in-haystack proposition. Note also that when creating a (WP native) gallery on a post, if the user had the option of simply getting all the images from a single user-created (virtual) folder, it would be a huge step forward.

Time is of the essence
This re-design is long overdue and the longer it is delayed, the greater the potential for it to become more painful when it is finally implemented due to backward compatibility issues, etc. Right now, the backward compatibility issues are manageable, in my opinion. (But the code is Backbone.js code. Does it make sense in 2024 to code an enhancement like this in Backbone.js? If not, perhaps the solution is to tear it out and re-do it with something more up-to-date while maintaining the current interface wherever appropriate.)

-Patrick